Egyptian revolution at the crossroads

The Egyptian revolution has reached a critical point, with the weakness and lack of strategy of the opposition leadership allowing a once-discredited army elite to resume a key role just over a year after it was forced to yield power to civilian authority.

As a result, the growing authoritarianism of the Morsi/Muslim Brotherhood regime has, for the time being, been replaced by an authoritarian military-backed regime. The suspension of the constitution, the arrest of Morsi and the closing down of Muslim Brotherhood media outlets are dangerous signs.

So too is the reinstatement by the Supreme Judicial Council yesterday of Mubarak-era judge Abdel Meguid Mahmoud to the post of prosecutor general months after he was removed by Morsi.

With the liberals in Tamarod, who called for the street campaign to oust Morsi, joining the “interim” regime, the masses have been led up a cul de sac. The new regime has no intention of changing the real power relations in Egypt, whereby the army and the capitalist class between them direct and control the economy. Fresh elections for the presidency will not alter this position.

That explains the muted response to Morsi’s removal by the White House and the ConDem government. Their concern for the democratic process is, of course, hypocrisy writ large after decades of propping up Mubarak. Obama et al simply want the people off the streets as soon as possible in case other people cotton on to how revolutions work.

The Egyptian street was powerful enough to bring down the Morsi government that was increasingly ruling by decree and had failed to address soaring unemployment, rising prices and inequality. In fact, it was negotiating with the International Monetary Fund to end subsidies on key foodstuffs.

But as a situation of dual power developed in a revolution that is striving to go further than democratic reform, the movement was headed off at the pass. Tamarod (Rebel) has affirmed its support for the military’s intervention, as have a number of human rights groups.

Jonathan Steele, the Guardian commentator, is right when he says: “The fact that the army's move has been welcomed by many of the revolutionaries who first had the courage to go into the streets against Mubarak in 2011 is a desperate commentary on their political naivety and shortsightedness.”

No good can ever come of the army’s role. History has shown repeatedly from Chile to Greece that the army is part of the status quo of the capitalist state and will remain so until that state is deconstructed. Declaring that it is “on the side of the people” is what Allende told Chileans shortly before Pinochet seized power in 1973.

What the Egyptian masses have shown is their capacity to become the decisive force in society. That is a lesson that will not be lost on people struggling against austerity and inequality around the globe as the economic crisis deepens.

But what is equally true is that without a plan, without a strategy that is based on actually taking the power away from the ruling elites, the revolution cannot succeed. The reorganisation of the economy along democratically-owned and controlled lines and the guaranteeing of human rights cannot be achieved within the existing political-state framework.

In Egypt, power was up for grabs but the inadequacy of the movement’s leadership saw the ball grabbed by the army as a vacuum emerged. The illusion that power can slip into the hands of the masses by sheer energy and presence alone is just that – an illusion.

The situation remains fluid, with the army balancing between the contending classes. The aspirations of the masses remain unfulfilled while their determination to win is undiminished. To prevent a counter-revolution from taking hold, in Egypt they will need to build a leadership and develop a strategy that actually has power as its goal. In other words, the social and political revolution have to come together. This is actually the challenge in every capitalist country today.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor 

Egypt's second revolution for 'bread, freedom, justice'

The second Egyptian revolution which is firmly under way has swept millions into the new uprising against the presidency of Mohamed Morsi, whose regime has patently failed to solve any of the day-to-day problems of the masses.

Viewing the crisis in Egypt primarily as a conflict between the forces of Islam and secularism is mistaken. Like all religions, Islam provides a form of expression for the very poor who are otherwise unrepresented.

Although the target is the Muslim Brotherhood, the central issues are poverty, unemployment, corruption and deepening inequality. The Morsi government has failed on all these counts.

Millions of Egyptians are voting with their feet in every major city to rage against the Morsi government. Like their predecessors in 2011 they vow they will not leave the streets until the regime is gone.

Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, came to power after the 2011 February revolution which saw long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak toppled. Turnout in the 2012 elections was low. Morsi won only 51% of the votes.

Egyptians are now rallying to the cause of Tamarod or “Rebel”, the newest political campaign to emerge in the country. So far its campaign calling for Morsi’s departure has attracted over 22 million signatures, quickly exceeding its young organisers’ target of 15 million.

Tamarod denounces Morsi as a total failure for not achieving the goals of the 2011 revolution – which were bread, freedom and social justice. He is castigated for “excluding the deprived” and not bringing justice for the revolution’s martyrs.

Economic and social security feature high on the list of grievances. Tamarod says it rejects Morsi “because we are still begging loans from the outside” and “because the economy has collapsed, and depends only on begging”.

Leading Egyptian economists warned in May that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Egypt’s former finance minister Samir Radwan recently warned of a devastating effect on Egypt’s poorest people.

"You are talking about nearly half of the population being in a state of poverty.  Either in absolute poverty or near-poor, meaning that with any [economic] shock, like with inflation, they will fall under the poverty line," he said.

The value of the Egyptian pound is plummeting as fuel and food prices soar. But taking on a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund requires political stability and draconian cuts in public spending.

Since Morsi’s election Egypt has seen rampant inflation with even the middle classes finding it impossible to cope economically. A quarter of Egypt’s youth are unemployed.

Thus, the aspirations that lay behind the historic overthrow of Mubarak have not been realised. Indeed, it is clear that neither the democratic nor the economic demands of the revolution can be achieved within the current political framework – in which the army still plays a central role - or by holding fresh elections.  

Looking to Egypt’s armed forces for salvation, as many in Tahrir Square are presently doing is equally a mistaken strategy. Dark forces in the military such as those of General Abdel al-Sisi are waiting in the wings.

Millions are rejecting Morsi because, like the provisional government of February in 1917 in pre-Soviet Russia, it cannot deliver to those who overthrew the autocracy that preceded them. The global economic crisis, which is driving the new Egyptian revolution, makes further reforms impossible.

Liberals and pessimists are warning of the “dangers” of a second revolution. Yesterday’s Observer cautioned that Egyptians, “caught up in a storm of dissent degenerating into outright violence, may lose what gains they have made, and be swept backwards”.

This neo-colonial viewpoint is, as always, a defence of the status quo. Achieving “Bread, freedom and justice” requires revolutionary polices to end capitalism in Egypt. That means uniting poor farmers in the countryside, workers in the urban centres, the unemployed, professional people and respecting the rights of women, religious minorities and to freedom of expression.

A second revolution along these lines would inspire workers fighting capitalist austerity in every country to deal with their own rulers.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

  

Arab Spring leads to winter revolution

The prospect of Egypt’s second uprising inside a year is more than a challenge to continuing military rule; it also poses the transformation of the democratic into the social revolution.

Many had hoped, wrongly, that the army which facilitated the removal of Hosni Mubarak by standing aside from the January revolution, would step aside once parliamentary elections had been held. "The army and the people are one hand," many chanted when Mubarak quit.

But there was too much at stake for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) to allow that to happen. They are part of the Egyptian ruling class in the most literal sense, owning large chunks of the economy.

As much as one-third of Egypt's economy is under military control through a host of government-owned service and manufacturing companies, at least 14 of them under the auspices of the Military Production Ministry. El Nasr Co. for Services and Maintenance, for instance, has 7,750 employees in such sectors as child care, car repair, and hotel administration.

In a secret cable dated September 2008 signed by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey, the embassy in Cairo told Washington that the Egyptian military was "becoming a “quasi-commercial” enterprise itself.

Other military companies produce small arms, tank shells, and explosives — as well as exercise equipment and fire engines. These companies add up to "a very large, unaccountable, non-transparent Military Inc.," says Robert Springborg, author of Mubarak's Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order.

The generals "will try to massage the new order so that it does not seek to impose civilian control on the armed forces," he said in February. "It's not just a question of preserving the institution of the army. It's a question of preserving the financial base of its members."

And that is just what has happened. Next Sunday’s scheduled elections would result in a powerless parliament and a military that is exempt from political oversight and control, according to a protocol that the generals got the interim government to sign up to.

The army has been tightening its grip on power since Mubarak was overthrown. They have processed 12,000 civilians through military tribunals, more in 10 months than the former president managed in his 30 years of rule.

Outspoken critics are in jail while blogger Maikel Nabil has been on hunger strike for almost three months in protest against military trials. There are official bans on strikes and demonstrations and the army provoked sectarian violence against Coptic Christians as part of its divide and rule strategy.

Some activists now realise that the euphoria of January masked the tasks that still lay out ahead. “We handed power to the military on a silver platter," said Ahmed Imam, a 33-year-old activist, of the January uprising. "The revolutionaries went home too soon. We collected the spoils and left before the battle was over."

The removal of the army from power will require a strategy that goes beyond the creation of a parliamentary democracy. In itself, that would not be able to deliver on the needs of the Egyptian people in terms of jobs and a better standard of living.

A parliament that leaves economic relations unchanged would, be at the mercy of global banks and the International Monetary Fund, as is patently the case already in countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.

As the November revolution gets under way in Egypt, it can inspire the rest of the world by going beyond capitalist-army economic ownership and handinf over the productive resources to people in the cities, towns and countryside. That is something the Egyptian people could unite around and the people’s assemblies created in January can take on the job of achieving this transformation.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Arab Spring's first election

“Whatever happens next, I feel like now I exist”, said one man in Tunisia, just after voting. And, indeed, Sunday’s elections in the small country that sparked off the Arab awakening of 2011 have seen an amazing enthusiasm from people, young and old.

Voter turnout exceeded all expectations as over 90% of those who had registered cast their votes. Out of Tunisia’s 10.6 million population, 4.4 have the right to vote. Over the summer 95% of them registered.

A Facebook campaign “Je me suis inscrit – Je vote” was enthusiastically supported and circular red bumper stickers with the motto “ana qayyadtu" – the same message in Arabic – are still decorating walls and cars.

For Tunisians this is an historic moment as the election for a constituent assembly is their first chance to voice their political desires since the overthrow of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, last January. The new assembly has the task of designing a new political system and how the state will relate to its citizens.

The Tunisian political revolution was sparked by the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in the poor south of the country. Mohammed Bouazizi’s sacrifice became the signal for Tunisians to rise up against their oppressive rulers in a revolution which captured the imagination of millions of young Arabs, notably in Egypt where the dictator Mubarak was ousted within weeks.

The movement soon spread from North Africa to Spain and countless other countries which have seen democracy movements rise up.

The prejudice that Arab countries are incapable of embracing a wide range of views and holding truly democratic elections is being well and truly squashed by the seemingly endless and amazingly patient queues outside polling stations around the country.

They have voted for 11,000 candidates from nearly 100 parties for a 217 member constituent assembly in 33 districts of the country in a day which, according to thousands of international and local observers, saw few if any infringements of electoral procedures.

Dr Amor Boubakri, professor of law at the university of Sousse and a member of the Electoral Observatory , said he believed Tunisians have, have succeeded in making the Arab Spring's first election a resounding success.

Boubakri, who was interviewed by Al Jazeera, is confident that election will be a democratic transition, highlighting pluralism, power-sharing, organised opposition and gender inclusiveness as never before.

It is undoubtedly a new phenomenon, “something happening for the first time in Arab culture, as linguist and historian, Hammadi Sammoud has noted. “It is a rite of passage from accepting the things were decided for us to participating. We are creating ourselves.”

Huge problems beset the country, which has 700,000 out of work, a zero growth rate and near-junk status of its bond ratings. There is also a deep north-south divide. The northern coast benefits from tourism, cosmopolitanism and fertile land, while the south – where Bouazizi lived, remains dogged by poverty and under-development.

The people of the south and centre of the country are seen as a silent majority who have hitherto seen themselves as excluded from the entire political system.

Of the political parties, it is likely that al-Nahda (Renaissance), the moderate Turkish-style Islamic party will pick up voters in the coastal cities. But this will be countered by support for the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties and the Progressive Democratic Party.

The large number of political parties and diversity of views is an expression of Tunisia’s unique culture which has seen a synthesis of Ottoman, Arab and Islamic heritages with European influences.

The election is now re-shaping the relations of the citizens with the state. Tunisians know they are being closely watched by their neighbours in Morocco and Libya and more widely around the world. The huge enthusiasm shows a clear desire to take forward the democratic gains of the Tunisia’s January revolution into the social improvements that still elude ordinary people.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Egypt's military regime is challenged

The 25th of January revolution in Egypt that swept Mubarak from power after 30 years vented simmering social, political and economic pressures which had been building for a long while.

Revolutionaries are keen to shed the old “puppet state” stigma from the days of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime received more than $50bn from the US during his three decades in power.

Egyptian finance officials are scrambling to find internal fixes so that foreign aid isn’t necessary to cover a reported $28.5bn deficit. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the population rejects foreign aid, especially from the US, even as the country struggles to recover.

A Gallup poll found that 75% of Egyptians oppose US aid to political groups, and 68% think the US will try to exert direct influence over Egypt’s political future. In the last week, the military council that runs the country rejected the caretaker government’s proposed budget largely because of its dependence on aid from the US and other foreign donors.

Egypt also retreated this month from seeking loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank after activists complained that such arrangements compromise the country’s sovereignty. Instead, a new package of help for housing and small firms has been agreed with the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign aid typically comes with conditions about how such money is spent, which many Egyptians interpret as making the country beholden to Western interests. The IMF’s offer over the weekend of a $3bn loan to Egypt came with veiled conditions that suggest “it expects the country to alter its subsidies system and adhere closely to free-market principles despite previous claims that IMF assistance is unconditional,” according to a Cairo newspaper.

Pro-democracy activists say the long-time annual US aid package of up to $2bn – $1.3bn of it for the military – ensured that Mubarak’s authoritarian regime upheld the unpopular peace treaty with Israel and kept the Suez Canal open to facilitate American military operations in Iraq and the region. The joint US-Israel-Egypt enterprise that allowed tariff-free exports to the US must also be under threat.

The Muslim Brotherhoood's newly established Freedom and Justice Party is planning to focus on replacing Egypt's use of financial instruments such as derivatives and futures, with the three-decade old Islamic system operates by sharing profit or loss between the bank and its clients, instead of interest, which is forbidden.

John Sandwick, an Islamic finance adviser in Switzerland, believes that introducing more Islamic finance would not necessarily solve the country's economic problems. "Shari’ah is a method of doing business that doesn't stop speculative frenzies and impractical or unethical behaviour, as we've seen all too clearly," he said.

Nothing is settled, as blogger Jesse McLaren, who has followed the Egyptian revolution, notes: “Despite the removal of Mubarak, his regime is still intact: the emergency laws and military trials of civilians are still in effect; police cracked down on demonstrators on Nakba Day and beat a bus driver to death in June.”

Workers are demanding a minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($200) a month. Women demonstrated in Tahrir on International Women's Day for government-funded child care, an end to discrimination in hiring and promotions, and an end to sexual harassment and violence against women. Peasants have began reclaiming the land.

“But these demands challenge the military regime and the corporations that support them, which persists despite Mubarak's overthrow. As a striking doctor said, ‘Every percentage point for increasing health care will come from the budget of the Ministry of Interior and other parts of the oppressive machine.’ The same economic crisis that contributed to the revolution is driving a deeper wedge between political reforms gained and the social and economic demands that have yet to be met,” McLaren rightly points out

The outcome of the political struggle will determine whether the country continues as a subordinate part of the web of finance and trade relations that unite the global capitalist economy or whether the popular revolt finds a leadership that sets out on a new path to not-for-profit social ownership.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Beyond the 'democratic transition'

The Egyptian revolution that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship in January also created the conditions for uniting the masses of North Africa and the Middle East with the new movements that have emerged, particularly in southern Europe, against a common enemy.

In overthrowing the corrupt authoritarian regime, the masses found themselves face to face with the harsh reality that the economic conditions which had driven on the uprising remain unchanged after Mubarak was removed. These take a unique Egyptian form. The armed forces, which were the backbone of the Mubarak state, own factories that make a range of products ranging from weapons to drugs, and even home appliances such as cookers. The state is reckoned to own a third of the economy through the army. The banking sector is also largely state owned.

Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, its major creditor, Egypt in recent year set about “liberalising” the economy and introducing “market reforms” through “structural adjustment programmes” (SAPs). These led to massive unemployment, rising poverty – about 44.4% of the Egyptian population were designated extreme poor to near poor in 2005 – and inflation, fuelling the revolution that swept Mubarak out.

The point of this story is that the IMF, Washington and agencies like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will, if they have their way, redirect the revolution’s energy into even deeper “reforms” and bigger SAPs that will integrate Egypt into the global market capitalist economy. This is also the plan for Tunisia and Libya.

The detail is brilliantly outlined in an article by Adam Hanieh for the ezine Jadaliyya. He explains:

Despite the claims of democratic transition, the institutions of the Egyptian state are being refashioned within this neoliberal drive as an enabling mechanism of the market. Egypt is, in many ways, shaping up as the perfect laboratory of the so-called post-Washington Consensus, in which a liberal-sounding ‘pro poor’ rhetoric – principally linked to the discourse of democratisation – is used to deepen the neoliberal trajectory of the Mubarak-era. If successful, the likely outcome of this – particularly in the face of heightened political mobilisation and the unfulfilled expectations of the Egyptian people – is a society that at a superficial level takes some limited appearances of the form of liberal democracy but, in actuality, remains a highly authoritarian neoliberal state dominated by an alliance of the military and business elites.

In essence, the financial initiatives announced over recent weeks represent an attempt to bind social layers such as these – Egypt’s military and business elites, the ruling families and large conglomerates of the GCC[Gulf states], and so forth – ever more tightly to the Western states. The revolutionary process in Egypt represented an attack against these elements of the Arab world. The uprising cannot be reduced to a question of ‘democratic transition’ –precisely because the political form of the Egyptian state under Mubarak was a direct reflection of the nature of capitalism in the country, the uprising implicitly involved a challenge to the position of these elites.

Hanieh is right. Democracy is neutralised while the power of the ruling corporate and military elites remains in place. That is the lesson not just of Egypt. In Spain, which had a “democratic transition” in 1975 after the death of the fascist dictator Franco, and in Britain where capitalist democracy has held sway for about 150 years, corporate and financial power predominates more openly than ever.

In Spain, the Real Democracy Now/M-15 movement is challenging the political system, while in Greece – which the IMF has bankrupted – anti-government struggles grow. In Britain, hundreds of thousands of workers are set to strike against the Coalition’s measures at the end of the month.

These confrontations effectively join with the Egyptian revolution, which is at a crucial stage. Democracy, if it is to mean anything, must embrace co-ownership and control of economic and financial resources, the repudiation of foreign debt and telling the money markets to get lost. That would constitute a genuine revolutionary, democratic transition and could be achieved through a network of people’s assemblies in each country. That’s what you’d call a structural adjustment programme of a positive kind!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

'You Go - We Stay' fits the bill everywhere

The Egyptian revolution continues its unfinished business. Before but especially since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, a situation of dual power prevails in a country where eight million people – a tenth of the whole population – took part in the mass uprising that broke the back of the dictatorship.

The sweeping out of not only the despised Mubarak, but his entire regime, including the five million in the security apparatus and the military top brass, is in progress, but is still to be completed.

The military has announced that it is dissolving parliament which was stuffed full of Mubarak’s cronies and suspending a constitution that banned political activity, thus conceding some of the principal demands put forward by those who occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo.

But groups such as, amongst others, the Coalition of the Youths of Egypt’s Revolution, the Revolutionary Youth Council and Revolutionary Command Council are insisting on further changes. They remain wary about the army – which propped up Mubarak – being in charge until promised elections are to be held in six months’ time.

Leading activist Khaled Abdelkader Ouda, while welcoming the army’s initial steps, said a council of trustees would be announced on Friday, the date when organisers want millions on the street to celebrate Mubarak’s removal. The council is being set up to guard "the people's revolution".

In the 48 hours run-up to Mubarak’s ousting, organised workers began to move and go on strike around the country. Transport workers in Cairo walked out on Thursday and some 24,000 textile workers struck in the town of Mahalla al-Kubra. Over the weekend, workers at the National Bank of Egypt struck, demanding the resignation of the bank's directors and restructuring of the wages.

Other groups taking action include oil workers, public transport workers and environment ministry civil servants. But while the mass movement is flexing its muscles, the army is reportedly preparing to ban strikes and other actions in a challenge to the popular will.

Egyptians were first inspired by the success of their fellow north Africans in Tunisia, who saw off President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. Like the Tunisian masses, they were motivated first by economic demands – an end to unemployment and poverty. This then turned into a political struggle – led and coordinated by young people making full use of the internet and social networking to defy and bypass state media censorship.

The focus is presently on a political revolution: the departure of the regime, its cronies and state apparatus. People want the dissolution of parliament to be followed by a new constitution and untainted forms of representation and democracy for all sections and political organisations in Egyptian society.

But the economic demands of the Egyptian revolution must still be formulated and achieved. They include the right to employment, good working conditions, a living wage and free trade unions. Attaining these means taking on those who own and control the banks, major industries and installations, such as the Suez canal. Elections to a new Parliament alone cannot fulfil these aspirations.

The calm determination of the Egyptian masses over the past 18 days, their courage in the face of state terror, their inventive and witty slogans such as “Day of Departure”, “No You Can’t”, “You Go - We Stay”, their insistence on remaining in Tahrir Square, has demonstrated unequivocally that when masses of people act together they become an unstoppable force.

So far the movement has been characterised by a skilful combination of face-to-face communication together with social media (sometimes used for deliberate deception), secrecy and strategic maneuvering has succeeded in outwitting the security apparatus.

The outcome of the Egyptian revolution now depends on the development of a leadership that can unite the networks of young people in the cities together with industrial workers for the purpose of a social revolution.

The demands of the movement must be broadened and deepened to articulate the economic and social needs of the Egyptian masses. This means liberating Egypt’s resources from the capitalist classes, one third of which are in the hands of the military.

The revolutionary and community councils and militant workers must appeal to the army rank-and-file, who have until now remained largely neutral, to join the revolution and remove Mubarak’s generals. These organisations can become the basis of a new democratic state to replace the existing, corrupt and big business state.

In this way Egypt can show the way, not only to the hundreds of thousands already stirring on the streets of Algeria, Yemen and Jordan, but to workers throughout the world who are fighting the impact of the world economic recession. 'You Go - We Stay' should be our common refrain.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Egypt’s unfinished revolution

The future of the Middle East is being fought out in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Egyptian people’s determined struggle for economic and political freedom against a regime of dictators and torturers goes on.

Their 14-day struggle is fuelling the flames of revolt throughout the Arab world, from Gaza and the West Bank where Hamas and the Palestine Authority have banned protests, to Yemen and Jordan.

So, is the drama being played out in Egypt and reverberating throughout the Arab world, a true revolution? The answer must be an unequivocal Yes.

Not only in Cairo but throughout the country, millions have been involved in demonstrations and, equally crucial, in organising barricades to enforce security and stop provocations by Mubarak and his secret police.

Does the revolution need to go further to truly succeed in its aims of bringing political and economic freedom to the majority of Egyptians? The answer is also a decisive Yes.

The Egyptian ruling classes backed by an equivocating United States, want to preserve Egyptian capitalism. They are playing a war of attrition, hoping that the “silent majority” will tire of disruption and will remain neutral or even back the ruling elite with or without Mubarak at their head.

The keys to real power remain in the hands of the regime. It controls the rubber stamp parliament, the television and official media and the army. Those occupying Tahrir Square are only too aware that the army is the decisive factor in Egyptian politics.

They have climbed up on the tanks and greeted the soldiers as their allies. At present protesters are sleeping and camping under the tanks. They see the army as their protection against Mubarak’s thugs. After all it was the army under Abdel Nasser who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in the 1952 revolution. But the history of revolutions – and of Egypt itself – shows that this is a perilous path. In no way can the army, even though it consists mostly of conscripted workers, be relied upon to support those demanding the end of not only Mubarak but his entire state apparatus, including the hundreds of thousands of secret police, spies and torturers. The army has done very well under Mubarak. Last year the Egyptian armed forces received over $1.3 billion from his US backers.

Over the weekend, Vice President Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s intelligence chief, met with opposition leaders and is likely to announce that a new constitution is being drafted. Amongst the 50 people who took part in the discussions were members of the hitherto-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Many have suffered imprisonment and torture at the hands of Mubarak’s army of spies and torturers and had only just been freed last week. But the Brotherhood originally refused to support the anti-government demonstrations and is only now trying to regain its credibility.

Egypt’s uprising is indeed virtually leaderless. A new generation who have known nothing but Mubarak’s repressive regime broke unexpectedly onto the world stage. Initially inspired by the revolutionary events in Tunisia, young people have organised through Facebook, following the call of Asmaa Mahfouz and Ahmed Maher in the April 6 Youth Movement, which campaigned for the Million March on February 1. Many, including the newly-formed Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, are rightly demanding the dissolution of the current parliament, 97% of whose seats are controlled by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.

The Egyptian revolution had to break free of its old leadership elites to challenge the dictatorship. The urgent need is for the spontaneous movements, including the community-run barricades, to develop a strategy for economic and political power through people’s assemblies.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Uprisings deepen capitalism's crisis

Attempts to solve the global debt crisis have sent food prices soaring, driving impoverished masses onto the streets throughout the Middle East. Now a wave of political revolutions dashes remaining but false hopes of economic “recovery”.

Oil prices are rising sharply as the upheaval that began in Tunisia and now grips Egypt threatens to spread to major producers Algeria, Libya and even Saudi Arabia. Stock markets are jittery as they take in the consequences, including any threat to oil tankers which use the Suez Canal.

In Egypt, workers, the unemployed, young and old, artists and athletes, Christians and Muslims have united in their determination to bring the 30-year old autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak to an end. His determination to hang on until September pleases neither the Egyptian people nor the White House, which fears the consequences of an unstoppable revolutionary process the longer Mubarak’s regime clings to power.

This fact is recognised by the International Monetary Fund too, which helped impose harsh market “reforms” on Egypt in the 1990s, which have only deepened inequality. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned governments to tackle economic strains or risk instability and even war.

“This protest won’t end in North Africa; it will spread in many countries because of high unemployment and increasing food prices,” Hamza Alkholi, chairman and chief executive of Saudi Alkholi Group, a holding company investing in industrials and real estate, said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland.

As Nouriel Roubini, the leading economics analyst who forecast the global financial crash, notes: "What has happened in Tunisia, is happening right now in Egypt, but also riots in Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan, are related not only to high unemployment rates and to income and wealth inequality, but also to this very sharp rise in food and commodity prices."

In Egypt, 40% of the 80 million people live on less than $2 a day. Prices of basic foodstuffs have soared by over 17%, putting basic necessities beyond the reach of many. The average Egyptian now spends 40% of his or her income on food while economists put the unofficial jobless rate at about 25%.

The worldwide surge in commodity prices is being driven by stock markets and investment banks desperate to find new areas for profit-taking. With the 2008 financial meltdown still unravelling, speculators have turned to basic commodities. They have used funds pumped into the system by the US Treasury and the Bank of England, also known as QE or “quantitative easing”.

QE was designed to boost economic growth. Instead, it has helped to create a 32% increase in the average cost of food in the second half of 2010, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Wheat prices alone jumped 70% between June and December.

Despite Mubarak’s televised claim that the protests had been manipulated by political forces this is a completely Egyptian, largely secular, wholly grass roots movement. With its roots in a strike by textile workers in April, 2008, a popular revolution is under way. The country is at a standstill as events unfold. The economy is paralysed. People’s committees have taken charge of the security of their streets and neighbourhood.

Even when Mubarak shut down the internet and mobile phone networks last week the 70,000 strong April 6th Facebook group of mostly young people continued to organise the protest, calling for the “million man march” that brought more than two million Egyptians onto the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Sinai and Upper Egypt demanding that the president should leave.

People on the street demand change to “every element of the system” but lack a developed leadership that can transform the Egyptian capitalist state. As soaring prices and unemployment make clear, revolutionary social and economic change is required along with the end of the Mubarak dictatorship.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Eygpt's uprising shakes Washington

The prospect of a renewed period of linked revolutionary struggles not seen since the 1989 anti-Stalinist movements in Europe, is taking shape in North Africa. Events are shaking not just regimes like Mubarak’s in Egypt but the calculations of Washington and London too.

The major powers have relied heavily on authoritarian governments in the Middle East, fundamentalist as in Saudi Arabia as well as secular as those in Damascus and Cairo, to sustain their own interests in the region. These centre on maintaining the flow of oil and sustaining Israel, regardless of its treatment of the Palestinians.

Washington has turned a blind eye to systematic repression while hypocritically prattling on about “democratic values”. Now that the people themselves in Tunisia and Egypt have taken matters into their own hands in defiant uprisings, the United States and others are urging caution!

Clearly, to talk about democracy is one thing, but to actually fight for it is not acceptable.

The position was summed up by Tony Blair, the New Labour prime minister who introduced the world to “regime change” with the joint US-British illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Middle East “peace envoy”, told the BBC’s Today programme that Egypt
should "evolve and modernise",

He added: “The question is how they evolve and modernise, but do so with stability. The danger is if you open up a vacuum anything can happen. As Hillary Clinton [Obama’s secretary of state] was saying yesterday, the important thing is to engage in this process of modernisation, and improving systems of government, but do it in a way that keeps the order and stability of the country together."

Fortunately, there are moments in history when the thoughts of people like Blair and Clinton count for little and express only their nervousness at the appearance of the masses on the streets.

A new generations is simply not prepared to put up with mass unemployment, rising prices, political corruption and authoritarian rule. Men like Mubarak can no longer – unjustifiably – claim the mantle of previous leaders like Nasser who led the fight against colonial rule and nationalised the Suez canal.

Nor are the people of Egypt buying into the regime’s propaganda that it’s either us or the fundamentalists. That kind of scaremongering is reminiscent of the old Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe who justified their authoritarian regimes by warning of the imperialist enemy at the gates. Fat good it did them in the end.

Blair is right in one sense. No one knows where a revolutionary process will end up. Egypt, with its population of more than 80 million, is key. The struggle of the 1950s for national independence roused the nation’s workers and rural poor. Many lay down their lives to thwart the 1956 invasion by Britain and France.

With the dire intervention of Moscow, the revolutionary movement degenerated and the country became a pawn in the struggle between the major powers. Today, Stalinism is no more and America’s power and influence is clearly waning. The opportunity arises to launch a new stage of a revolution that was distorted and halted by Sadat and then Mubarak.

This time, the aim has to be a transfer of political and economic power into the hands of the masses themselves, with the objective of ending private ownership of industry and land and creating a renewed democracy based on popular people’s assembles. Driving the upsurge in North Africa is the world crisis of capitalism. The same crisis is having a deep impact in Britain, with growing unemployment, exorbitant fuel costs and inflation. We should take our inspiration from those on the streets of Cairo, Suez and Tunis.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Desert horror for asylum seekers

There has been a hullabaloo about the shark attack on a German tourist in the luxury Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh, on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula. But the continuing plight of a group of Eritrean refugees held prisoner in the Sinai desert, has received little attention, despite the killing of three hostages on November 28.

Until an appeal yesterday by Pope Benedict XVI, only human rights campaigners such as the Italian EveryOnegroup have been raising alarm bells on behalf of the remaining 77 Eritrean asylum seekers who are being held prisoner by people-traffickers.

EveryOne Group, an NGO working to protect refugees and migrants, has appealed to the UN, the European Parliament, the President of the European Commission, the Council of Europe's Committee Against Torture, Egyptian President Mubarak, and the Italian government:

“These people have been held for months on the outskirts of a town in Sinai in purpose-built containers. Their captors are demanding payment of up to US$8,000 per person before releasing them, and are subjecting them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. They are bound by chains around their ankles, have been deprived of adequate food, are given salty water to drink, and have been tortured using extreme methods, including electric shocks, to force friends and families abroad to make these payments. The women in the group, who have been separated from the rest, are particularly vulnerable to severe abuse.”

“Egypt will have legalized the trafficking of human beings, slavery, torture, and cold-blooded murder: a massacre that can be avoided with international diplomatic intervention”, EveryOne Group concludes.

The truth is that desperate asylum seekers have suffered terribly while crossing the Sinai desert for some time now. Easy prey for traffickers, they must cross through Egypt’s long desert border with Israel. Israeli tabloid newspaper Yediot Ahronot, for example, last month documented the horrific conditions in the camps run by Bedouin people smugglers.

This interest in the shocking conditions in Sinai is not an accident. Israel has become an unlikely magnet for asylum seekers over recent years, despite its hostility to migrants from Africa.

The aftermath of war and the brutal rule by the Afewerki government in Eritrea has made even the unfriendly state of Israel an attractive destination for people escaping extreme poverty and religious persecution. The regime in Eritrea, which waged a civil war against neighbouring Ethiopia in which 100,000 people have lost their lives, is amongst the harshest in the region. The country has no constitution, no independent press. Religious minorities suffer persecution.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been warning of a “flood” of illegal migrants and his government is erecting a fence along the 130-mile border with Egypt as well as a detention centre. But Israel is not the only guilty party in this matter by a long way. Brutal treatment by the Egyptian government goes back at least five years, when it put down a protest by Sudanese refugees on their way to Israel.

Egypt is right now in the throes of a contested election. Its 78 million people are suffering high inflation and unemployment under the rule of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak. His ruling National Democratic Party yesterday claimed to have won 83% of the 518 seats at stake in the National Assembly. But this was after the main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, had withdrawn from the election, protesting against ballot rigging. The Independent Committee for Election Monitoring is today holding an international press conference in Cairo to discuss the parliamentary poll and the deterioration of democracy in Egypt. Election monitors have called on the president to dissolve parliament.

Despite their differences, the present states of Eritrea, Egypt and Israel will never solve the problems facing their own people, let alone those of persecuted religious or ethnic minorities, such as the Eritrean refugees in Sinai. That task belongs to a mass movement, working for the common interests of those living in the region, regardless of religion or ethnicity.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

For Gazans, the Nakba is a daily tragedy

This is the month when Palestinians remember their Nakba, or "catastrophe," during which millions of women, men and children were eventually pushed off their land and rendered homeless refugees during and after the founding of Israel in 1948.

For those living in the Gaza Strip, the tragedy worsens by the day. The blockade of the territory by Israel, sanctioned by the European Union and Washington, has led to a failing economy, rising unemployment and deteriorating power, sanitation and health facilities, according to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report.

As a consequence of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, 98% of industrial operations have been shut down since 2007 and there are acute shortages of fuel, cash, cooking gas and other basic supplies. The ban on imports of building materials has prevented the rebuilding of some 6,400 homes destroyed or severely damaged by Israel’s military assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 and prevented the construction of some 7,500 homes to cater for an expanding population. Some 3,500 families are still displaced.

Water-related health problems are widespread in the Strip because of the blockade and Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, including reservoirs, wells, and thousands of kilometres of piping. “Gaza is not a refugee camp in a small remote place. It’s a city of one and a half million people with the needs of a developed urban environment that is used to certain standards. It needs certain standards of maintenance. Everybody should be worried because contaminated water has no borders,” said Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

An electricity crisis continues in Gaza with the network only able to meet 70% of demand due to insufficient money to buy fuel for the Gaza power plant, and a lack of spare parts which is causing technical failures. Unemployment in occupied Palestinian territory is over 30%, rising to 67% among young people, according to the WHO report. Seven out of ten families were living on less than $1 a day in May 2008. Chronic malnutrition has risen in Gaza over the past few years to reach 10.2 percent.

Israel’s 2008-2009 military campaign damaged 15 of the Strip’s 27 hospitals and damaged or destroyed 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities, none of which have been repaired or rebuilt because of the construction materials ban. Some 15-20% of essential medicines are commonly out of stock and there are shortages of essential spare parts for many items of medical equipment, the WHO report said. As a result, the steady decline in the infant mortality rate in recent decades has stalled.

Israel’s blockade is ostensibly aimed at the Hamas government, which it and its allies refuse to recognise despite its election victory in 2007. In practice, however, the intention is to demoralise the Palestinians and deny them their right to self-determination. In this the Zionists have the support of Egypt’s authoritarian regime. It has blockaded Gaza’s border with Egypt, even driving a steel barrier deep into the ground to prevent Palestinians from using tunnels to bring in goods.

Gazans, however, continue to smuggle everything from fridges to fans, sheep to shampoo and even cars through the tunnels. The UN estimates that as much as 80% of imports into Gaza come through the tunnels. But the head of operations in Gaza for the UNRWA John Ging, says: "Everything is expensive because people are hostage to the dynamics of a black market."

For ordinary Palestinians, the blockade and deprivation imposed by the racist Israeli state are continuing reminders of the tragedy of the Nakba.

Paul Feldman

Communications

The biggest prison camp in the world

The deportation of Respect MP George Galloway from Egypt today is only the latest in a series of anti-Palestinian actions by the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak which have helped Israel enforce a blockade of Gaza.

Mubarak’s despotic regime is as hostile to the Hamas administration in Gaza as the Israelis are. Some opposition figures in Egypt even go so far as to claim that Mubarak gave the Israelis the green light to launch their murderous attack on Gaza at the end of 2008, which claimed 1,500 lives and led to accusations of war crimes. Foreign minister Tzipi Livni was in Cairo shortly before the air strikes and ground invasion were launched and opposition MPs say Mubarak gave his blessing to the assault.

Galloway was in Egypt as part of an international delegation of the Gaza Freedom March. This originally planned to arrive in Gaza on 29 December 2009 to join a march against the Israeli blockade together with residents of Gaza two days later. Instead, most of its delegates remained in Cairo, having been blocked from going to the Rafah border by the Egyptian government, and instead marched against the Egyptian blockade on Gaza.

An aid convoy bringing medical and other supplies was also held up and the Egyptian authorities attacked people trying to cross into Gaza. Earlier this week, Gazans threw stones at Egyptian soldiers in protest at the delay and one was killed. The convoy finally made it into Gaza yesterday.

The 1.5 million people of Gaza have lacked vital medicine and food supplies for over a year following the Israeli assault. Tunnels used to smuggle supplies in from Egypt have been sealed up by the Mubarak regime. Just before Christmas, international aid groups in a report condemned world governments for betraying the people of Gaza by doing nothing to lift the blockade.

Gaza has become the largest prison camp in the world, not that you would know that from the conspiracy of silence from London to Washington, where the concern is to break Hamas whatever the cost to the Palestinian people. It’s just as well that rapper/poet/playwright Lowkey’s track “Long Live Palestine” is doing so well in alerting people to what’s happening.

Almost 1,500 delegates from 43 countries converged on Cairo in December believing they had permission to go through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing into Gaza. But under pressure from the Israelis the border was closed on December 29. The very same day Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Mubarak held talks in Cairo. It was a cosy affair. Netanyahu said he was "very encouraged" by the meeting, while Cairo said it had been "very positive". Earlier that week, the Israelis announced a new programme of settlement building in the West Bank.

A series of protests by delegates were broken up by the authorities although the Syndicate of Journalists invited the marchers to join their members at their trade union headquarters for a rally. Delegates also convened an ad hoc convention to ratify the "Cairo Declaration". An international working committee drafted a document setting out a plan of action for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli regime.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians are constructing a steel wall deep into the earth at the Rafah border, making it even harder to get in or out of Gaza.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Mubarak's 'war on terror'

Under the guise of combatting terrorism, Egypt’s People’s Assembly is today rubber-stamping a vote on constitutional amendments designed to turn the country into a police state. Yesterday 100 MPs walked out of parliament as voting was due to take place. But people in Egypt could not see the protest because television cameras were banned. On Saturday demonstrators confronted riot police and plainclothes agents in Cairo’s central Tahir Square.

President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for 25 years, is notorious for his suppression of political dissent, including the detention of bloggers, who have joined numerous other prisoners held under "emergency laws".

Muslim Brotherhood MPs boycotted the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Peoples Assembly and joined with the Wafd Party, the leftist Tagammu Party, the Nasserist Karama movement and independent MPs to oppose the constitutional changes.The amendments are to be put to a popular referendum in April. The government claims that a third of Egypt’s 78 million people will vote. But in the view of leading bloggers, the turn-out could be as low as 2 per cent. But no one is in doubt of the outcome. The constitutional changes will weaken the role of judges in monitoring elections and give police greater powers of arrest and wide authority to monitor private communications. Those branded as “terrorists” lose the right to trial before a judge and will be tried by military tribunals. At present the label of terrorism is applied even to modern Islamist politicians including the Muslim Brotherhood and others.

Even before this latest move by the Mubarak regime, Egypt’s Association for the Assistance of Prisoners has said that human rights conditions in Eygpt are even worse than those documented in a US Bureau of Democracy Report published on March 6, which documented torture and killings in police stations.

The MB operates openly despite being banned since 1954, but last week over 80 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were detained after the group said it was boycotting the parliamentary vote on the amendments.Mubarak’s government will use what has been described as a “constitutional coup” to stop the Muslim Brotherhood before it makes electoral gains. President Mubarak wants a smooth transfer of power to his son Gamal and the increasing popularity of the MB stands in his way. Members of the Brotherhood running as independents hold nearly one-fifth of the 454-seat lower house of parliament.

Amongst those at the Cairo demonstration on Saturday were members of the Kifayah (Enough!) movement. One Kifayah leader said: “These are not constitutional amendments, it’s a constitutional coup. The aim is to block the remaining channels of democratic participation and resistance, and the ability of the judiciary to address wrongs in the system. The government’s aim is to gain complete control of elections.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to becoming Egypt’s largest opposition was aided and abetted initially by British imperialism in its campaign against Nasser’s revolutionary movement. Subsequently it worked with Sadat, Mubarak and the CIA to destroy sorely needed secular and socialist alternatives. Mubarak’s latest lurch to dictatorship shows that he is playing with fire and will only strengthen the hand of reactionary religious movements.

Corinna Lotz, AWTW Secretary